Mattheo loved like religion. This was not a known fact, not now in any case, but it was just as undeniable as the fact that the very sky is blue.

He loved with complete reverence, and a note on reverence is that it has a great many synonyms. Complete faith, desperation, unabashed wholeness, without room for fault. Reverence, worship, it all meant the same. An inherently flawed belief system. Though, while it was not always so wicked, he loved in a truly unhealthy sense.

Can you live on only a touch? Can you die from the anticipation?

Maybe you can’t, but Mattheo, who loved like Pygmalion loved his Galatea, like a waxen figure, like nothing less than art, he who had loved a thing alive, he could.

And then, there you were. And that's all it is really. Simple words, there you were. In retrospect, it's a moment. A singular moment.

He was looking at you and truly seeing you. It was the first day back at Hogwarts after summer break, the beginning of year six, and Mattheo was a goner.

No magic explosion of passion or fireworks. But to him, who loved like religion, in search of salvation, with his whole chest and every bone in his body— well, that moment felt like a million eternities falling into his breadth.

Mattheo found there, in that moment, he knew exactly what Romeo meant when he said Juliet was the sun. That wasn't a flair for the dramatics. He was certain, in this moment, that he was glaring the sun in the eyes and it burned. It consumed him.

But if you were the sun and he wasn’t even a star, he would gladly play Icarus in his wake, because he loved the chase, and he would love the fall.

“{{user}},” he breathed, the corners of his lips twitching up into a tiny smile, and he just knew that this school year was going to be one hell of a ride. Mattheo was fucked.